Brian Sugar

crazy weather in sf

brian — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:35:05 -0800

THE NEW DORK - Entrepreneur State of Mind (Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys Spoof)

brian — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:13:27 -0800

terrible

dinner

brian — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:50:04 -0800

VIDEO: PopSugarTV Sizzle Reel Update

brian — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:22:49 -0800

LA Team created this for our board meeting yesterday.

best kid's room ever

brian — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:20:04 -0800

aj moatz pls come out

brian — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:30:05 -0800

Best thing I have heard in a while. Guess who?

brian — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:30:10 -0800

I Hate Ad Networks

brian — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:31:10 -0800

Ad networks make our sites look low rent and the ads themselves are usually ugly.

But it made us money, hundreds of thousands of dollars each quarter.

After ending our ad sales relationship with NBC in 2008, we brought it all in house: ad sales, account management, creative services, and ad operations. Ad ops got good at optimizing our remnant inventory. To avoid competition, as our sales team grew, we added more and more brands to the ad network blacklist.

So we started ramping up house ads. We had a lot to promote: PopSugar TV, OnSugar, CelebStyle, PopSugar Mobile, ShopStyle, ShopStyle Mobile, and etc. So that kinda worked. The ads looked much prettier. But they made no money and drove more house ad impressions.

"We can rebuild them. We have the technology. We have the capability to build it. We can make them better than they were before. Better, stronger, faster.*"

The technology we have is ShopStyle, the best search engine for the best fashion brands. What if we use ShopStyle products to create beautiful shopping ads? We already have strong business relationships with all the top retailers and ShopStyle gets paid for driving them traffic. Why not distribute ShopStyle around our sites?

Ad Networks vs. ShopStyle Shopping Ads

Could we create an ad that drove equal dollars and looked prettier?

For the months of December & January we ran tests of millions of impressions to compare our fully optimizied ad networks versus our ShopStyle ads. To make the ads more relevent to our readers, the ads are contextual, so if J.Crew appears on the page, J.Crew products appear in the ad.

Results

Ad Networks: $.51 CPM

ShopStyle Ads: $2.79 CPM

We are very pleased with the results and are now ramping down the ad networks and replacing them with our ShopStyle ads for a much wider scale test.

We are also adding these ads to our ShopSense service so anyone can use them and make money! Check out ShopSense now for your site.

*Quote adapted from The Six Million Dollar Man

made it

brian — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:00:07 -0800

happy bday Krista!

brian — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:30:04 -0800

stand here for help

brian — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:30:04 -0800

Willie brown is the mc

brian — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:00:04 -0800

uncle phil scores

brian — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:20:04 -0800

iPhone Must Download: MenuPages

brian — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:55:07 -0800

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/menupages/id352412764?mt=8

blue sky

brian — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:00:10 -0800

flight cancelled

brian — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:01:00 -0800

après ski at vendetta's

brian — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:45:07 -0800

knee deep

brian — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:25:04 -0800

back in the saddle

brian — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:35:03 -0800

cheers at russell's

brian — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:50:04 -0800

recovery update: teacup chair

brian — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:00:23 -0800

blue sky and powder

brian — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:05:05 -0800

dumping

brian — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:40:07 -0800

Arthur likes to tuck

brian — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:40:04 -0800

tough skiing with iPhone

brian — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:15:06 -0800